Team Lunch
Friday, October 19, 2007 at 05:56PM My monthly Team Lunch occurs once a week.
The budget allows for one Team Lunch a month, which is why Mulhausen gets upset every time I submit an expense report. We have the same conversation:
"You can't have four Team Lunches a month," Mulhausen barks.
"I didn't," I say. "There's only one Team Lunch on that expense report."
"It only indicates one Team Lunch," he says. "But all four are with your entire team. That's a Team Lunch in my book."
"No... The other three are Business Discussions."
"What's the difference?"
"We don't talk about business when we have our Team Lunch."
A Team Lunch is meant to be a team building experience, and team building is all about the team, not the job. If you talk about the job, it brings people down. If you talk about what everyone has planned for the weekend, it lifts people up. Team building is a very manipulative and deceitful tool of the trade: pretend work doesn't exist so everyone is happy and nice to each other, then throw them back into their jobs and let them ride that wave for a while.
"If you have a Business Discussion with your entire team, it's still a Team Lunch," Mulhausen says.
"No... I discussed business with the entire team. That makes it a Team Business Discussion, not a Team Lunch."
Mulhausen always gets frustrated with my explanation and ends up just signing the expense report.
He really hates teams dinners. I have a quarterly sushi night every month.
Reader Comments (1)
This blog has been Introduced. Rate and review it on BlogIntro.com!